When in Koh Kong

I had one of those- "Yep, I'm in Cambodia" moments recently.

I was traveling for work when my colleagues decided it was time for lunch. We stopped at a roadside stall and the owner brought out the dishes of the day. (No menu here; the place was too small for us to be able to choose.) One of the dishes contained a finely chopped meat with green beans and chili. A few of us were curious and asked the owner, "What kind of meat is this?"
She replied, "Tragoot."

And that meant something to all the Cambodian people I was eating with… but I had to keep investigating to find out that tragoot is:

a) a wild animal
b) like a crocodile but smaller
c) a "crawling animal" / some kind of reptile or lizard
d) almost extinct

Unfortunately I didn't get to point d) until after I had eaten my share of the endangered species with a plate of rice and a cup of iced tea.

While the others didn't seem to feel too bad about their transgression, I was already feeling a pang of guilt for my contribution to the destruction of the planet when later that afternoon something happened to make it even worse. Three of us were standing in front of a TV tuned to Animal Planet when one colleague pointed to the screen and said- "Pip, look! That's the animal we ate for lunch!" Oops.